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The use of citizen complaints as a valid and reliable measure of actual police behavior has often been criticized. It is the purpose of this study to validate the use of externally generated citizen allegations of misconduct as an indicator of police malpractice by comparing the occurrence of internally generated complaints. Using both the internal and external complaints of misconduct that have been filed with the internal affairs office of a large police agency in the Southeast as a database, this manuscript will explore for possible similarities in the identity of the accused officers, officer characteristics, and types of complaints.
Lersch et al. (2000) studied this question.